Alamogordo is an interesting town. It’s a smallish town, but has an oriental grocery store and a natural foods store as well. I thought that was neat, and was tempted to get some Thai green tea at the grocery, but decided I have enough tea with me that I have yet to use. I’m like a crazy cat lady, but for tea.

Alamogordo was the first place we stayed that had mountains as a backdrop. This made for beautiful mornings with fog on the mountains. I spent one afternoon watching the rain and rainclouds sneak across the range. A neat thing, indeed. We stopped here because I wanted to see the White Sands National Park, and it did not disappoint. Random white dunes of sand in the middle of a valley. Climb up the dunes and you get wonderful views of the surrounding mountains. “Rent” a disc (Buy one for $10, get $3 back if you return it) and sled down the dunes.

Alamogordo was also the first place that snowed on us during this trip. Phhhh.

This is the road to Alamogordo, NM. I think I took this along US highway 285. Driving I-10 was really low on my “things I’m excited about on the road trip” list for some reason. I had heard that it was desolate and desert-like and this made me really apprehensive. Mostly because I hadn’t had much experience with desolate desert roads. And I kept thinking about No Country for Old Men and that somehow I would accidentally happen upon a crime scene and then Javier Bardem in a pageboy haircut would come looking for me relentlessly. (While I would love for Javier Bardem to come looking for me, I’d like for it to be for different reasons than his motives in the movie.)

In reality, I-10 really wasn’t that bad. The first two hours out of San Antonio have an interesting landscape and it wasn’t really until I hit highway 285 that I started to think, hm, well, this is not a place I would want to get stranded. Luckily, I didn’t, and I kind of thought that I wouldn’t. My car is in pretty good shape with no hint of mechanical issues that would put us roadside for awhile. So then I just had to deal with the boring monotony of the drive. Oh look, more desert. Some ranches. Flat flat flat. I thought Indiana was flat. No, it is flatter out here in certain places. But then we found the Sacramento Mountains, which had snow and all manner of breathtaking views that I failed to capture very well on film, but here’s a shot:

So really my mind had blown things out of proportion and the drive really wasn’t that bad. Good lesson for me to learn.